Humanity and Nature in the Steamboat Paintings of J.M.W. Turner

1986 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
William S. Rodner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Age ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Snow Storm ◽  
Technological Achievement ◽  
Great Exhibition

The year 1851 witnessed the Great Exhibition, Britain's celebration of technological achievement. Thousands of curious and excited visitors from the world over flocked to Joseph Paxton's futuristic Crystal Palace to marvel at the various exhibits which underscored, not only Britain's commercial and industrial preeminence, but also the Victorian faith in progress and the triumph of the machine.Less noticed, late that same year, was the passing of one of the most perceptive observers of the new age, the veteran artist J.M.W. Turner. This great English Romantic, famed for his paintings of bucolic landscapes, storms at sea, and Alpine avalanches, also had drawn significant inspiration from the new forces which were then rapidly transforming Britain and the world. A notable body of his work, particularly the efforts of his later career, exist as complex visual commentaries on the reality and the meaning of nineteenth century industrialism. Watercolors of blackened mills, polluted skies, and steam locomotion capture the face of change, while great oils such as The Fighting Temeraire and Snow Storm—Steam–Boat off a Harbour's Mouth symbolize a dynamic new age.

Global Islam: A Very Short Introduction

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nile Green
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Global Islam: A Very Short Introduction looks at the methods used by individuals, organizations, and states to spread multiple versions of Islam around the world. Since the late nineteenth century, publications, missions, congresses, and pilgrimages have contributed to the communication and evolution of Islam. At the start of the twentieth century, the infrastructure of European empire allowed for the widespread communication of Islamic beliefs. During a period of secularism in the mid-twentieth century, global Islam became more accessible and, in some cases, more political. How have today’s broadcasting and smartphone technologies changed the face of global Islam? Will communication technologies reconcile the contradictions between variations of the faith, or will they create new ones?

William Webb Ellis and the Origins of Rugby Football: The Life and Death of a Victorian Myth

1981 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Baker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Four Corners ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Foreign Competitors

In the sense that myth is a reordering of various random elements into an intelligible, useful pattern, a structuring of the past in terms of present priorities, nineteenth-century Englishmen were inveterate myth-makers. As liberal and scientific thought shook the foundations of belief, the Victorians erected gothic spires as monuments to a medieval order of supposedly simple, strong faith. While their industrial masses languished, they extolled the virtues of self-made men. Confronted with foreign competitors and rebellious colonials, they instinctively asserted the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race. In classic myth-making style, the Victorians set about “reorganizing traditional components in the face of new circumstances or, correlatively, in reorganizing new, imported components in the light of tradition.”Myth not only serves self-validating ends; it also provides a cohesive rationale, a fulcrum propelling people towards great achievements. If the Victorians were confident and self-congratulatory, they had cause to be: their material, intellectual, and political accomplishments were many. Not the least of their successes was in the sphere of sports and games, a subject often ignored by historians. Especially in the development of ball games—Association and Rugby football, cricket, lawn tennis, and golf—the Victorians modernized old games, created new ones, and exported them all to the four corners of the earth. Stereotyped as overly-serious folk, they in fact “taught the world to play.”Since sport, more than most forms of human activity, lends itself to myth-making, it is not surprising to find a myth emerging among the late-Victorians having to do with the origins of Rugby football. Like baseball's Doubleday myth, the tale of William Webb Ellis inspiring the distinctive game of rugby is a period piece, reflecting more of the era which gave it birth than of the event to which it referred.

scholarly journals A Crusader Duel at the Crystal Palace: The statues of Godfrey of Bouillon and Richard the Lionheart at the Great Exhibition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon John
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
International Competition ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
Shared History ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Heads Of State ◽  
Great Exhibition

Abstract This article examines the display of two sculptures of medieval figures at the Great Exhibition in 1851. Those sculptures – Carlo Marochetti’s Richard Coeur de Lion and Eugène Simonis’ Godefroid de Bouillon – both honoured figures remembered as crusaders, and are better known in their permanent bronze versions that stand today in London and Brussels respectively. However, it is often overlooked that both works appeared at the exhibition, with Marochetti displaying his work on behalf of England, and Simonis exhibiting his on behalf of Belgium. Their appearance in 1851 stimulated a multi-faceted national rivalry, evidently encompassing both the two sculptors and the respective heads of state, Victoria and Leopold I of the Belgians. Drawing from written evidence and visual culture, this article traces the shared history of the sculptures at the Great Exhibition, before exploring contemporary responses to their appearance there. Its findings contribute to scholarly debates over the status of the Great Exhibition as either a peace congress or the catalyst for international competition, as well as to discussions over the cultural impact of the medieval past in the nineteenth century.

The Queensland International Exhibition of 1897: ‘Dazzling display’ or ‘a frost’?

1998 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith McKay
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Exhibition ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
The World ◽  
Mixed Feelings ◽  
World Expo

On 5 May 1897, just over a century ago, the Queensland International Exhibition opened in Brisbane. This, the seventh international exhibition to be held in Australia, was Queensland's contribution to the great series of world expos that followed London's famous Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851. The exhibition also marked Queensland's recovery from a disastrous depression of the early 1890s, proclaiming to the world that Queensland was now on a steady path of progress. Contemporaries viewed the exhibition with mixed feelings: to some it was a ‘dazzling display’; to others ‘a frost’ (a nineteenth-century term for ‘a fizzer’). ‘Frost’ or not, the event was soon forgotten after it closed three months later, and hardly rated a mention at the time of its recent successor, World Expo '88.

scholarly journals Stereoscopic Architectural Photography and Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology

ZARCH ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 84-105
Author(s):  
Douglas M. Klahr
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
General Public ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
Phenomenology Of Perception ◽  
The World ◽  
Spatial Dimensions ◽  
Viewing Experience

Stereoscopic photography utilizes dual camera lenses that are placed at approximately the interocular distance of human beings in order to replicate the slight difference between what each eye sees and therefore the effect of parallax. The pair of images that results is then viewed through a stereoscope. By adjusting the device, the user eventually sees the two photographs merge into a single one that has receding planes of depth, often producing a vivid illusion of intense depth. Stereoscopy was used by photographers throughout the second half of the Nineteenth Century to document every building that was deemed to be culturally significant by the European and American photographers who pioneered the medium, starting with its introduction to the general public at the Crystal Palace in London in 1851. By the early 1900s, consumers in Europe and America could purchase from major firms stereoscopic libraries of buildings from around the world. Stereoscopic photography brought together the emotional, technical and informed acts of looking, especially with regard to architecture. In this essay, the focus in upon the first of those acts, wherein the phenomenal and spatial dimensions of viewing are examined. Images of architecture are used to argue that the medium not only was a manifestation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, but also validated the philosophy. After an analysis of how stereoscopic photography and Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy intersect, seven stereographs of architectural and urban subjects are discussed as examples, with the spatial boundaries of architecture and cities argued as especially adept in highlighting connections between the medium and the philosophy. In particular, the notion of Fundierung relationships, the heart of Merleau-Ponty phenomenology, is shown to closely align with the stereoscopic viewing experience describing layers of dependency.  

scholarly journals Beyond belief : the crisis of faith in A.S. Byatt's fiction

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Jennifer Anne Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Fictional Narratives ◽  
Natural Development ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Crisis Of Faith ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Norse Myth

A. S. Byatt’s Ragnarök (2011), a retelling of the Norse myth of the downfall of the gods and the end of the world, would seem to be a departure from her fictional narratives set in the nineteenth or twentieth century. However, this book is a natural development from her earlier novels that explored the Victorian crisis of faith resulting from the loss of religious certainty in the face of scientific discoveries. The author’s writing over the last twenty years has become increasingly involved with science, and she has long acknowledged her rejection of Christian beliefs. Byatt used the nineteenth century as a starting point for an exploration of twenty-first century concerns which have now resurfaced in the Norse myth of loss and destruction. This paper revisits "Possession" and "Angels and Insects" within the framework of her more recent writing, focusing on the themes of religion, spiritualism and science.

African Sculpture

Africa ◽  
1928 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eckart von Sydow
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Emotional Content ◽  
The Other ◽  
Art World ◽  
It Service ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
The One ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
Successful Colonization

At first sight this sub-title may appear somewhat paradoxical, for what could be in greater contrast than the things denoted by the words ‘primitive’ and ‘European’? On the one hand, civilization with its highly developed technical methods in everything practical and theoretical, on the other, the world of simplicity in all practical activities. There—a mighty movement of expansion, irresistibly drawing into its sphere of influence all primitive life, to transform or destroy it, and in either case to make what remains of the primitive peoples and their countries do it service; here—vain resistance against the superior strength of the European, or the doubtful attempt to conform to European ideals. In the face of successful colonization by the cultured races of Europe, the last thing to be expected was any influence on Europe by the primitive peoples. Nevertheless, such an influence certainly exists, and that in the realm of art. After the period of realistic Impressionism in the last decades of the nineteenth century, a strong movement flowed through the art world of Europe, finding its most permanent expression as Futurism in Italy, Cubism in France, and Expressionism in Germany. This movement in Germany, in opposition to Realism, made it one of its principles to observe and express not the external but the interior world, while in France the desire for bold drawing of a decorative character prevailed. Both tendencies culminated in an art movement which felt for the primitive works of art a sympathy due to a sense of relationship: the Cubist appreciated their inherent architectural character, and the Expressionists the mystic emotional content.

World Expositions of Paris (1889 and 1900) and Chicago (1893 and 1933)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Frangos
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Mass Consumption ◽  
Bourgeois Society ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
The World ◽  
Nineteenth Century France ◽  
Arcades Project ◽  
Columbian Exposition ◽  
Glass Crystal

The world expositions were monumental, public spectacles originating in the industrial fairs of early-nineteenth-century France and culminating in the Expositions Universelles of Paris (1889 and 1900) and the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893) and Century of Progress International Exposition (1933) of Chicago. The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London was among the first of the nineteenth-century industrial exhibitions featuring monumental exposition architecture with its cast-iron and glass Crystal Palace designed by Joseph Paxton (1803–1865). For cultural observers of the time as well as later critics, the Crystal Palace and later expositions – particularly the fin de siècle expositions held in Paris (1889 and 1900) and Chicago (1893) – exemplified the culture of mass consumption that had its origins in the bourgeois society of the nineteenth century. In The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) described the world expositions as ‘places of pilgrimage to the commodity fetish’ (7) in which workers were transformed into consumers through the mediation of iron and glass architecture. The American expositions of the 1930s intensified the massive displays of utopian expectation and technological progress on offer at the fairs with their exhibits of ‘dream cars’ and ‘houses of tomorrow’, monuments to Consumerism as well as science fiction visions of the future.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document